


to find sleep after the storm

by indexthisqualisign



Category: The Pacific (TV)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Character Death, Character Study, Eugene-centric, Extended Metaphors, M/M, Minor Character Death, War is hell, mostly canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-26
Updated: 2015-09-26
Packaged: 2018-04-23 11:45:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,695
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4875625
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/indexthisqualisign/pseuds/indexthisqualisign
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>"The whole island is a graveyard and they are just another part of it. The only suspense is in discovering whether death will anchor them to this parcel of hell, or if it will cross the ocean with them and leave in its wake salt-water marks all over their lives."</em>
</p><p> </p><p>The story begins on Pavuvu, in between Peleliu and Okinawa, and follows Gene home after the end of the war. The narration is overall linear, but since it follows Gene's thoughts, it sometimes revisits events or thoughts of the past.</p>
            </blockquote>





	to find sleep after the storm

**Author's Note:**

> Without Eufry' s help, encouragements and hard work as a beta, this fic would have never happened; so cheers to her!
> 
> Disclaimer: This fic is obviously based on fictional characters from the tv serie The Pacific, and is not meant to represent real persons. 
> 
> [and because I am a typical grad student, have my ramblings about the representation of Snafu’s speech in this fic]: I followed Preston's (1982:323) position that, in the representation of vernacular speech, "morphological accuracy is the appropriate level of representation," thus rejecting the use of nonstandard orthography. Differently put, sentence structure reflects non-standard syntax and grammar, but words are not written to represent specific pronunciations. Though this is not an unproblematic position (e.g. West 1996; Bucholtz 2000), I believe it was the most consistent and suitable decision in the context of this fic since: (1) the fic in itself is written in standard orthography; (2) there is no arbitrary relation between the written code and its phonetic life enacted through the speech of differently positioned individuals, yet the use of nonstandard orthography implies the existence of an objective norm against which the 'deviant' pronunciation is set; (3) pre-existing belief of the specific vernacular Snafu uses is shared by the readers of this fic and thus allow the correct phonetic representation of Snafu's speech.

The thing with war, Sledge realizes after Peleliu, is that it forces you to face yourself. They tell you that the enemy will wait for you on the other side of the lines, but they never told him there would be an enemy inside of himself to discover once he set foot on the battleground.

 

Before he was deployed he used to think he was a good person. He had spent his life fooled into thinking he was benevolent and kind, had been convinced that following religious guidance made him virtuous; he had thought being lawful made him good. The truth the war unveiled turned out to be different. He realized it now––could see it now. He had always been a bad person: at best indifferent to other people's suffering; at worst the one whose hands were holding the power to unleash misery. After all, there are so many things a man can kill without needing to wield a gun.

 

Living life protected from all the evils and horrors of the world had kept him protected from his true nature. War had broken down the barriers, shortened the distance between his actions and their brutal repercussions: he realized how readily he was able to accept his creating suffering as the acceptable price. Suddenly he found a gun in his hands and found out at the same time he was able to kill––more than able, _willing_. He found out he was able to run past injured marines, satisfied with the excuses and the orders the Marines Corps repeated at him–– _keep moving, keep going, keep advancing_. They were good at repeating, good at conjuring the right catch phrases. They probably figured out that buzzwords and rhymes are easier to remember than a soldier's sense of self.  

 

War, he discovered, was not as lawless as it seemed. There were laws imposed upon soldiers, laws guiding the unfurling of events with a decided clarity: the laws of survival and of extinction, to kill or to be killed. However, such simple laws did little to regulate his actions or his thoughts aside from a renewed awareness of his survival instincts. As he denied the part of himself who followed blindly Christian and societal morals, Sledge felt like a world of options had opened before his aimless feet. He used to think of life as a road, sinuous and treacherous at times, yet still as an orchestrated process. Now, he thought of life as never-ending plains and forests, upon whose soil feet had never travelled––only his advancing steps traced behind them the phantom of a path whose denouement remained a mystery, a route which did not preclude his existence but which would be formed as its trace.

 

Because of this new knowledge he had acquired about himself, his whole identity had now to be reformulated. As a result, standing next to Snafu became a matter of survival in more ways than one––he was no longer simply the rookie following around a veteran Marine in the hopes of seeing the war through. The very reason that had kept him away from the man became the reason why he would not stand by any other. Being in Snafu's presence meant not only discarding the thought of pretence regarding his own nature, it meant uncovering the complex ways one negotiates their selves and actions without the guide of Christian morals or judicial laws. Standing next to Snafu became a form of survival, if of the existential kind: to stand with someone else who accepted the truth about himself was to learn how to keep on living regardless. There is, after all, some form of comfort in knowing he is not alone in this position.

 

There is a form of comfort in knowing, he thinks as he watches Snafu meanly berating the new recruits from walking too close to him in camp, that he is not the worst man he knows. No matter how ugly he might discover his nature to be the next time he is ditched on an island to fight, he will always be able to look to his side and see a soul darker than his. It might only prove again what kind of person he truly is, but he enjoys being able to carry with him some reassurance––enjoys being able to treat Snafu as a simple vessel for his projected dilemmas.

 

In any case, it is not like Sledge could ever cause the man suffering. It is clear Snafu barely cares for anyone but himself safe for the passing entertainment he gets from people––be it by being around them or by torturing them. Material conditions over everything else in this world: Snafu is capable of seeing gold flash in a corpse's tooth before he can recognize some form of humanity in another man's eyes. Again, this is reassuring. There are no expectations from him to care in return. Sledge is not even sure he can care about other people's lives now––they all seem so vain and fragile. Meaningless in this grand theater of true human nature, defenceless under the power of destruction deployed on both sides. He does not know anymore.

 

The sun is up, like it always seems to be, and the heat is enough to drain him of his will to get up and get his chow. He barely feels the hunger, too hot and queasy to look forward to over-cooked rice. The ever-present film of sweat covering every inch of skin seems to be dragging his body toward the ground and to add a few pounds to each of his limb. He closes his eyes against the almost unbearable brightness of the day and shelters his eyelids behind his arm.

 

"You sleeping, Sledgehammer?" he hears minutes later, after Snafu got tired of playing with the recruits. It reminds him of the way his dog Deacon plays with his toys, chews them, pulls them, destroys them only to discard them when his attention is called away. Humans are as cruel as animals can be. Social Darwinism, the competitive struggle for survival––is it not the reason they were fighting on that island in the first place?

 

"Screw you," he mumbles as a reply. He hears Snafu exhale a cynical laugh before he feels the thing they call a cot dip under his weight.

 

"They are serving chow." It is the explanation he receives for Snafu's intrusion into his personal space. Sledge knows Snafu does it only to annoy him, a constant reminder of the man's antagonistic nature, a casual cue to remember where they stand––side by side for now, with no guarantee of a tomorrow.

 

"I don't care," he sighs, knowing too well Snafu will raise to it as if his words were bait and not a dismissal.

 

"How you going to kill Japs if you don't eat your chow, Sledge?" Snafu's smirk has always had the ability to transpire through his words. Sledge does not even need to see him to know it is there, perched on his lips like a bird of prey.

 

"With mortars and guns," he replies. He shifts on his cot, slowly dipping toward Snafu's weight. Even the laws of gravity are working against him now.

 

"Not with your lousy reflexes," Snafu says just as he brusquely pushes the side of the cot downwards. In his surprise, Sledge is unable to counterbalance and finds himself falling face first to the ground.

 

At first he does not move––the ground (rats and crabs and dirt and mud) does not seem as dirty to him as it used to in the past. He does not feel the urge to get up and dust himself upon the first second of contact the way he would have, back in Alabama. Given enough time, you can get used to anything, can get desensitized to almost anything. At the moment, he prefers the ground to having to deal with his anger toward Snafu. After all, once he gets up, he has to decide on a reaction.

 

He no longer knows how to react to what happens to him. Before, he would have simply done what he had been told was normal, expected; things are more complicated now. He does not feel the need to reign in his emotions anymore––but he also does not feel emotions the way he used to. He does not feel pain like he did in the past. The more seconds pass, the more foreign his own anger seems to him. He does not care: about the dirt, about his aching face, about his scratched hands. He does not care. It does not matter. Nothing really seems to.

 

He gets up and, without a word, sets off towards the canteen. Before long, he hears footsteps trailing behind him, and soon after he feels Snafu's hand fall on his shoulder––it can be no one else's, can only be Snafu's. As he picks out dirt from the scratches on his hands, Snafu chuckles close to his ear. "You an odd one, Sledgehammer".

 

He has never thought of himself as out of the ordinary, always had pictured himself as a regular, slightly unremarkable young man. War, however, has a way of stripping you away from all you thought you knew––your home, your family, your friends, your country, yourself. He is no longer the man he used to think he was.

 

"Guess I am."

 

Snafu chuckles again. "Guess you are."

 

* * *

 

 

"Okinawa" enters his vocabulary. There are so many words, so many names he has learned since he became a Marine. Many more he learned when he started fighting in the Pacific.

 

This is the first time he is fighting on Japanese soil, or one that has not been conquered recently. Before moving out and before boats brought in new recruits, they received a briefing by some Captain, explaining how there were civilians on the island who were not Japanese: this made them more deserving of their help and trust.

 

During the briefing, Snafu bent his head toward his, mumbled to make sure no one could understand his words aside from Sledge, and said: "How we supposed to make them out when they all look the same?" Sledge elbowed him into silence, giving him only a side-glance as an answer.

 

"You shoot the ones they tell you to, and you don't shoot the ones they tell you not to," Sledge finally replied once the briefing was over and they were walking back to their tent.

 

Burgie had stayed behind to be briefed about strategies and ammunitions. He had waved his hand at them, the way adults do to children to tell them to go play outside while the grown-ups talk about grown-up matters. Burgie is a good Marine, Sledge thinks, the closest thing to a good man he can imagine––aside from a captain who died and left hot trails of tears on his cheeks––, but in moments like these his patronizing tendencies tended to shine with a fervour usually tamed.

 

At first, as they kept walking, he thought Snafu had simply accepted his answer. He was wrong; the words were already formed in Snafu's mind, waiting between his teeth like dormant buds. When they arrived at their empty tent, he sat down on his cot and only then did Snafu open his mouth, only then did he reap the seeds that had been sown by his dismissive answer.

 

"What if they got it wrong, tell you to shoot people who aren’t Japs?"

 

Sledge shrugged dismissively before tugging away his sweat-covered standard issue shirt. There were two certainties in war, only two options: to survive or to perish. Everyone was aware of them even though no one was given a handbook of rules before they were shipped into the belly of the beast. People live, people die, and the best strategic move to survive is to follow the instructions coming from above––the higher-ups, not the Divine.

 

He set up his shirt to dry on a cord keeping the tent up and when he turned around, he met Snafu's unreadable eyes.

 

"What?" His tone was more aggressive than he thought it would be. The air was too stuffy, the battle too imminent for him to be able to endure Snafu's scrutiny and hypothetical questions. Unreadable eyes continued to bear into his until Snafu mirrored his shrug.

 

He does not know what to do with this hypothetical question any more now on Okinawa than he did on Pavuvu. The sight of civilians trying to survive the crossfire of war is foggy when seen through a curtain of sleepless nights and quicksand-like mud.

 

When a rookie suggests the Okinawans look like Japs, Snafu shuts him up, the way he does whenever a recruit tries to act up. He gives the guy a nickname––only suiting for someone who he will treat like a pet. Perhaps worse than a pet, Sledge realizes when Snafu fools the guy into giving him his brand new poncho. He vaguely hears "Semper fi" from his mouth as Snafu moves to catch up with him. It is fitting, he finds. Snafu would turn a pledge of allegiance into sworn loyalty to himself. Material conditions over humanity.

 

Later, as they walk towards battle, he remembers the shout of fellow Marines urging Snafu to take a shot at the unruly Japanese POW. He remembers his own will to kill him with his hands––more personal. More real. Some days it feels like touch is the only thing that makes him feel anything. So many seeds have been dispersed on the expanse of his mind and so many have failed to grow. No thought, no certitude finds roots inside the rubble of his soul.

 

Some days it feels like death is the only certain thing he knows.

 

But the Japanese POW lived to tell the tale.

 

* * *

 

 

By now, Snafu and him work in almost-perfect unison. They could probably make a functional foxhole deep in the mud without even having to say a word. Next to them, the new recruits look as awkward as newborns trying to stand on their feet. It is quite the sight, the perfect foil to remind him of the soldier he used to be. He offers Hamm some guidance. He does not do it because he cares deeply about him–– he simply sees no harm in it. Compared to Snafu's loud refusal to accept their presence and humanity, Sledge thinks he must look like a Saint to the rookies.

 

But the truth is–

 

The only truth here is–

 

The whole island is a graveyard. And they are just another part of it. The only suspense is in discovering whether death will anchor them to this parcel of hell, or if it will cross the ocean with them and leave in its wake salt-water marks all over their lives.

 

Later, when the sky is no longer illuminated by mortars but by the sun, Hamm is too consumed by his guilt to go through the motions of brushing his teeth. "Why aren't we offering them safe passage?" Sledge hears on his left. Images of the night before are probably spinning through Hamm's mind, forever going back to this one specific frame, the one of that little boy getting shot in the head. He can relate to Hamm's distress in a detached way. He remembers when he himself was a recruit, remembers when his emotions still felt raw under his skin. Yet, even the overflow of fiery lava from the entrails of the Earth accumulates and grows cold over time: all that uncontainable energy eventually turns into the very ground upon which they fight for their lives.

 

"The only thing that matters here is killing Japs." Snafu berates him with the implacable reality of war. With this sentence, he not only answers the question he asked Sledge when they were still on Pavuvu, he shatters Hamm's ideals with a snarl, meant to break and meant to harm. Sledge finds himself amazed at times, that a man can develop such a propensity for devastation, such skills to go around materializing it. He would never tell him, for Snafu would probably take it as a compliment, would snarl 'now you're just trying to make me blush' and show his teeth in a smirk. Sledge knows that, to Snafu, there can never be enough destruction, that he can never feel satisfied with the rising smoke in his wake.

 

"You got to get mean, Boo."

 

Snafu's words seem at first like another attempt to break the spirit of the recruits. But, even clothed as a threat, Snafu's words end up sounding strangely like advice to his ears. Unless a solider opens himself to his true nature, he can never hope to accomplish in war what he was set to do, Sledge thinks. It is only when you accept that there is no hope for you, and no hope to have for others, that you can keep putting a foot forward on a blood-stained river of mud.

 

He thinks about that, after they survive getting shelled by their own. He thinks about those words when his composure has been replaced by terror, by the abject thought that he might die from the hands of his own people.

 

Death is a shadow looming behind them, dying is a certainty for which he is and has been prepared for; but, in no way had he ever considered the possibility of having his life taken away by weapons made by the hands of working women back home. This possibility sends chills of terror in his spine, and he has to remind himself of the words, remind himself that he has to stay mean. No one cares for them, and they should care for no one.

 

When he turns to Snafu to find words to confirm his own anger, when he turns to him to find his vindication voiced in more brutal terms, he only finds Snafu's stare, different. His unreadable eyes spell out vulnerability in a way they have never done before.

 

Even in a graveyard, he thinks, flowers manage to grow from the water of the sky and the nutriments of the rotting dead. Even in war, the empty eyes of a fearless man can overflow from the fire falling from the sky and the proximity of rotting corpses. Sledge does not know what to do with this novel information. He does not know what to make of the small blooms of humanity he sees piercing through the darkness of Snafu's pupils.

 

 He turns away.

 

* * *

 

 

Life is mud-grey, blank. The cover of grim on every inch of his body seems to have pervaded his very pores to reach his heart and his brain. Everything is filtered through this film of dirt and death, subdued and surreal. Everything feels different, sounds different, tastes different. It is no wonder he feels different, too.

 

This is what war does to men, he thinks. Drowns them in mud for spilling blood. It is not so much death or the violence; it is the waiting, the in-between-ness, the restlessness, the dirt, the absence of sleep, of comfort––the way things do not make sense aside from living and dying. Killing is hard, seeing people dying is hard, but it feels like the hardest thing is having to live while feeling like there is nothing else to life than death and mud.

 

Thirty minutes ago, Snafu and Bill left on a detail, some fancy way of saying they were told to get some more ammunition. Sledge stays put with the recruits. He uses this time to eat his ration, finding a plank of wood to sit on. It rained an hour ago and the muddy ground has barely absorbed any water. Wet mud ends up caking on their clothes, and he does not feel like having to deal with Snafu's ridiculous jokes about him being a 'stiff ass' once he comes back. He does not stop to think about the fact that he might not come back at all. There are things better left alone.

 

Further down, he can see Peck and Hamm, asses sitting right down on the mud, talking. Hamm is yawning, from boredom or from sleeplessness, and Peck is talking frantically. Sledge has to ask himself when (if ever) the man has not been on edge, full of fake bravado and thoughtless words. It is a sad thing to admit, but Sledge only (barely) tolerates Peck during battle, a time when he is terrified and useless––but at least then Peck forgets to open his mouth to spew crap around as if he were spreading the gospel.  

 

"I've never met a guy so crazy in my life––he's a fucking monster," Peck is complaining loudly, words stumbling upon another in his hurry to voice them.

 

Sledge starts working on his can of ration with his knife. Rifles shoot in the distance.

 

 _Monster_ feels relative in times of war. He finds he can no longer conjure images of monsters in his mind that do not bear the faces of everyone he knows like a parade of surreal masks. Is Snafu (of course Peck is talking about Snafu, had to wait until he was gone before airing his words out in the open, had to act like the coward that he is) to be denied of his humanity because he preyed on the recruits and made them sweat? Or is it because he screamed 'Die, fucking die, you fucking Jap' as he killed a man? Is he, himself, a monster, for wishing all Japs dead? Are they monsters for accepting their nature, for not refusing to be who they are? Is it not war the real monster––or rather, is it not human nature? What is war but the result of their competitive nature as creatures trying to survive amplified until morphed into mutual annihilation by the invisible power of political apparatuses? Civilized or primitives, humans have in them the violence, the ego of war. How can a monster be defined, then?

 

"Jesus, Peck. Stop yapping about Snafu just because he gives you the heebie-jeebies," Hamm says at the same time he picks at the mud stuck in his hair. "You're kind of an asshole yourself, anyway."

 

"But I'm not mental!" Peck shrieks, catches himself when he realises he is being too loud, and looks around with a terrified stare (is he afraid of an officer calling him out on it or of Japanese mortar fire?). Seemingly reassured in his continued survival, he turns back to Hamm before saying, in a hushed tone Sledge can barely make out: "You have seen his eyes, though. One day, killing Japs won't be enough. One day, he'll try to get the drop on us."

 

"Nighttime stories now?" Hamm mutters in disbelief.

 

"You can't deny he's a mental asshole."

 

"He's a sergeant. Mental or not."

 

"I could do without some unstable, mental sergeant."

 

Sledge almost gets up to punch him in the face, wishes he could beat the ungratefulness out of him. He does not care if Peck seduced girls while wearing the same uniform that enlisted (real, genuine) Privates wear. He does not care if he came to battle with carefully crafted thoughts of grandeur, of rising up to the occasion alongside brave leaders to chase away his fear of the battleground. Peck has got a sergeant who has so far kept him alive, and that is more than a lot of other Marines can brag about.

 

He realizes that, on the other side of the ocean, the side they were shipped from, discourse about war had been waged, weapons in a battle for hegemonic ideology. In the process of creating the image of the perfect American soldier––poster child of everything that is supposedly right with war––men like Snafu were made to appear abject. Snafu is, in the eyes of recruits and the American people, what should have been but cannot be––brave and selfless, a firm believer in America's truth and benevolence, and a good chap to his fellow men. But the truth is war heroes, the likes of Basilone, can only exist against the foil of other men fighting in the war. The truth is, war heroes do not win wars on their own. They need men who are not brave, but do not flee from danger. They need men who are deranged enough not to crumble under the atrocities of war and men. They need men worried about their survival; that is, men who will stay alive and will be able to keep fighting. They need men willing to kill other human beings and, most particularly, men who get good at it. Combatants are workers before they are patriots; the way war is in the simplest terms the labour of violence.

 

"The angels above are fucking weeping––it's a Christmas miracle."

 

Peck immediately tenses as Snafu's expressionless voice resonates out of nowhere. He is seemingly filled with the fear that, perhaps, Snafu has been standing behind the rock he appeared from for longer than he has made his presence known. Sledge would definitely enjoy witnessing all the color drain from his face as Snafu would take his revenge, slowly and painfully, for the words he uttered about him. He cannot, however, read on Snafu's face any indications that he has heard Peck's comments. Snafu simply drops the ammunition with the few remaining rounds they have, a casual reminder of what will happen that night (fighting, fighting, more fighting).

 

"We got to blow out the face of a Jap soldier who tried a sneak attack," Bill says before he makes a comment congratulating the recruits for staying alive without two veteran Marines to protect their skinny little asses.

 

"You shouldn't have, Sledge. It ain't even really Christmas," Snafu sits down next to him and takes his opened and half-eaten can of ration from his hands.

 

The smirk Snafu gives him does not feel dangerous––the edge of instability in his eyes seems to only make them brighter. He looks like he is wearing a monster-shaped mask, daring anyone to take a peak underneath. Sledge takes back the can from his hands, shoves him down in the mud and tells him to go fetch his own damned can of rations. Snafu smirks wider at him from the ground.

 

"Aye aye, Captain." He vaguely salutes, winks, grabs his rifle and leaves to God knows where, whistling.

 

As soon as he is out of range, he hears Peck screeches, "See! Fucking mental!"

 

Sledge does not need to see Hamm to know he is rolling his eyes.

 

* * *

 

 

It is 1042 when mail gets delivered to their squad; everyone but Bill and Snafu start reading right away. There is not much distraction on the battlefield. It is hard to find things to talk about, aside from fighting and the past, and most of the times the men do not feel like talking about either. They do share morsels of information about their backgrounds, inane snapshots of what their lives used to be. More and more, Sledge feels at a loss when he tries to come up with things to talk about when the other guys mention their past. His life feels foreign to him––after weeks on Okinawa, he barely remembers how he used to live on Pavuvu, much less how he used to go about his day in Mobile. He catches himself wondering what he used to think about during his free time, what activities kept him occupied. He simply cannot tell anymore.

 

Letters, though, bring new information. There is always something to talk about after they receive letters. Then, there are letters to write back. Suddenly, the morose monotony of battle, the long stretches of waiting in-between get disrupted by this single event.

 

About a week ago, he got a letter from Sid. Snafu had read over his shoulder, and taken to calling him 'Eugene'. It felt strange to hear his real name in Snafu's voice. He asked him why he had decided to start using his real name, to which Snafu replied, "All your names are real, Gene." Snafu's deadpan answer felt oddly right. It is because truths only exist in the plural, as partial and incomplete truths, he thought. Reality is subjective, positioned (he is Eugene, Sid's friend; he is Sledge the Marine; he is Sledgehammer, member of the second mortar squad). In turn, it became normal to use Snafu's last name to call his attention––a simple equation of reciprocity.

 

This time, it is a letter from his mother––there will probably be less to share with the others. Nevertheless, Snafu sits down on his left side, just far enough to give him some sense of privacy (there is never such a thing as privacy in war, what with living under the stars surrounded by other men, or with his own letters being read and redacted before they can even reach American soil), but close enough to engage in a conversation if he finds something to share among the ink scattered on pieces of paper.

 

As he reads her letter, he cannot help but feel absent from what is being described. Not only from the events themselves, but from the picture, the background, the familiar. That is, until he reaches that one line. The one that reads: 'Eugene, dear, I am sorry to let you know Deacon has passed away.' He folds down the letter, puts it back in its envelope. He will read the rest later.

 

He feels like his body is thrumming––like his heart does not know which way to send his blood anymore, as if his pulse is trying to push open his skin. He can feel it beat against his bones, under his eyelids.

 

Something must show in his face, a shadow must be flying over his irises, because Snafu calls his name once, then gets up, calls his name again.

 

"My dog died."

 

His mouth feels dry like it used to be on Peleliu, like each of his words are pronounced around a mouthful of dust. Snafu plops down next to him in the mud, does not even bother retrieving his helmet to sit on top of it. "I'm sorry," he says. He is not sure he heard it correctly, at first. Snafu is never sorry about anything.

 

"He was a good dog." It is all he can find to say.

 

He is upset about Deacon's death. He really is––feels it in the trembling in his fingers, in the wetness of his eyes, in the way he feels seconds away from having his defenses crumble. But the thing that bothers him the most is that, after all the violence he has witnessed in the past days, it is the thing that bothers him the most. He killed living, breathing human beings last night and he felt nothing but elation when the mortar round hit its designated target.  

 

He says nothing and Snafu sits down again, closer this time. Their shoulders touch, a warm point of contact. Snafu is trying to comfort him. They see men on their side die, day after day, and Snafu is trying to comfort him because his dog died. There is something so absurd in the picture this paints that he cannot even begin to think about what it means.

 

Hamm tells them his brother died, sunken into the sea by a Japanese fighter plane. Snafu has no wisdom about dog years to provide. He has, however, apparent insight on the deeper motivations of kamikaze fighters.

 

Sledge is too taken with his own thoughts to offer words of comfort of his own. He thinks: he had not been there to take care of his dog. He has been away from home for months. He remembers the last time he slept in a bed like it is a fond memory. Men are dying. Men keep on dying. Every day, day after day, men keep on dying.

 

"Why can't they just admit defeat?" Hamm wonders in anger.

 

There is so much ugliness, so much anger inside of him. He wants revenge, for all the people who died and all the things that were taken away from him.

 

"I hope they don't surrender," Sledge replies, "I hope we get to kill every last one of them."

 

It seems the Japanese are on the same page. Not even a minute later, he witnesses Bill getting hit by a round of mortar. The only thought in his head after the shock of the burst is that he _has_ to help him. Bill went through training camp with him, sailed on the same ship towards the Pacific muttering that he had never got sea legs on him as he hurled overboard. Bill is an asshole, of the highest class, who only knows how to bully others and talk about fucking women. Bill is writhing in pain and shock in the mud, charred and bloodied.

 

He tries to get to Bill but Hamm throws himself on him, and soon he is completely stuck in slippery mud by the added weight of Snafu. He can only scream for a corpsman, again and again, and keep on watching Bill mumble in pain. At least he has that reassurance––as long as they still feel pain, men are not dead. Pain is the domain of the living.

 

When Bill is taken away, and after he manages to calm down a little (only to be reminded of the fact that his dog, that Deacon is dead), Snafu sits his shoulder next to his to disperse his wisdom once more.

 

"My mama used to say 'shit is always followed by more shit'."

 

He does not say anything in return, can only close his eyes and take a breath. It takes a few days for another tragedy to hit them. It takes a few days before he is looking at blood trickling down from Hamm's slackened mouth into his empty eyes.

 

In the aftermath of the disaster, after what remains of Hamm has been discarded and the unstable feet of Peck have been lead elsewhere, Snafu crumples Peck’s poncho in his hands––the one peppered by artillery that Snafu had swapped with him on their first day on Okinawa.

 

Sledge looks at him and realizes Snafu's eyes have stopped being unreadable, have not been for a long time. Snafu has not called him 'Sledgehammer' since they were in Pavuvu. He looks younger, with his hair––longer after two months of living in their own shit––plastered on his face by the rain. He looks destroyed, like the last strand of sanity holding him together snapped when Hamm got killed trying to protect another Marine from himself.

 

For some reasons, Sledge's mind takes him back to Peleliu. He remembers, fuzzily, sitting down and trying to open a can of ration. It was after Ack Ack's death. It was after the lesson was hammered into him: death is indifferent to goodness. Death does not care, war does not care either and as such he _should_ not care. No point in that. You can only move on to the next carnage.

 

He was seated with his back to dead Japs. He was hungry, hungrier than he had ever felt in his life, but he found it hard to have an appetite with the stench of decomposing flesh and the spectacle of corpses rotting under the sun. The horrifying truth was, he was more disturbed by the awful smell and sight of it all than he was at the thought that these corpses had been sons and brothers and fathers. He found that being unable to care made it impossible to be a good man.

 

Snafu was throwing debris and stones unto the open skull of a former Japanese soldier, as if he had been throwing pebbles into a puddle after a thunderstorm. It did not matter, Sledge realized, whether the splashes were from water or blood––none of this mattered.

 

There was a Jap soldier behind him, the unforgiving sun shining on his golden teeth. This would do, he thought. This is my real nature. He had seen others do it; it was easy to follow their suit. Yet, he had not––Snafu stopped him. At the time, he felt insulted by his intervention; by the way Snafu stopped his cruel endeavour (desecrating a corpse for monetary gain) with an appeal to reason (avoiding bad germs is meant not getting sick and not dying). He felt rage, because Snafu had not tried to appeal to a better nature, had not even tried to pretend he thought Sledge could be a good person. Perhaps Snafu's nature was so dark and cruel that bad germs were truly the only threat he saw in the scenario. It made Sledge feel unstable, ready to unravel at the absurdity of war. He felt too full from the force of grief and the strength of evil in human's nature.

 

Thinking about it now, however, he finds himself interpreting the memory differently. Perhaps he made the mistake of believing in Snafu's performance––his attempt to attain a particular ethos, one of banal cruelty and emotional detachment. Perhaps Snafu tried to show how much he did not care to convince himself that he did not. Perhaps he had managed to wear over his skin a mask convincing enough to fool everyone around him.  

 

Perhaps, back in Pavuvu, when Shelton had laid his fingertips against his arm, looked at him with his unreadable eyes, and said 'I'm dying, Sledge'––perhaps, perhaps he had not been talking about jaundice.  

 

Throughout the night, the rain keeps falling in torrents, vicious and maddening. Sledge finds it hard to look at anything else but the cracks in the mask, at the glimpse of the man he sees underneath. Snafu does not let go of the poncho wrinkled in his hand until he succumbs to sleep.

 

* * *

 

For the past two days, the sky has been uncharacteristically clear, allowing airborne attacks. The ground trembled day in and out, before airplanes stopped piercing the blueness of the sky like a flight of crows.

 

He feels relieved when they are finally ordered to move forward. It is not that he is particularly looking forward to killing (despite his promise to kill all Japanese soldiers he made what seems to be months ago) and risking his life, but moving forward means that the Japs are retreating and every damn inch of this island they get under American control is one less inch before they can sail off from this goddamned island.

 

They kill lone soldiers, snipers hiding in caves. The men, far superior in numbers on their side (at last), take it as an occasion to give back ten-fold. The Marines have been stuck in mud and shelled on the regular. Now, they kill without mercy––they kill and they smirk, they kill and they laugh. They celebrate and congratulate as if it were hunting season. Most of them scramble to find some memento to bring homes––a pistol, an imperial flag. Some go further and take with them skulls, butcher away body parts of dying Japs. This is what happens when you put guns and resentment into the hands of men who do not see the enemy as human, he thinks. Violence is hard work, and sometimes men can be found terrifyingly willing to do the job. This is how wars are won: under the destructive power of humans’ true nature.

 

After a while, he finds himself next to Shelton, keeping an eye out for Japanese soldiers after most of the fighting has been carried on. The sound of ammunition being shot fades into the background. That is when he hears what can only be the wailings of a child.

 

Shelton hears it too. They share a look, thinking the same thought. They were tricked before. He still remembers the mother, the woman with the newborn baby, who had been strapped with a bomb. He still remembers the way her body exploded, hot blood and torn flesh flying in every direction.

 

Even if they both consider the real possibility of a trap, they move at the same time towards the little house. Sledge does not know what motivates Shelton to follow him inside––or perhaps he does know, by now. His own motivations, however, are very clear. He remembers the house, which stood alone on the rocky hill. He remembers being told to give its coordinates for an attack. He remembers how mortar went right through the roof to hit the target.

 

The wind is gently blowing against the straw of the roof, through the opening made by the mortar, until it touches their grim-covered faces like a caress. It feels like a dream. It is a nightmare.

 

A civilian family lay dead. Since yesterday, this infant has been left on the floor with his parents' corpse. Since yesterday, he has cried for a mother who can no longer provide for him.

 

"Lots of people fire mortar out here." Through the loudness of his thoughts, he hears Shelton's words. Perhaps for the first time, he acknowledges them for what they are (a genuine attempt to protect him from the evils inside himself).

 

"It doesn't matter."

 

The baby keeps wailing. They do not move––cannot.

 

"The hell is the matter with you two?" The lieutenant asks from behind them. Neither of them had registered the sound of his steps, but it is not surprising that the loud cries of the infant has made someone else come up and look inside the house. They do not say anything. Lieutenant Mac cradles the baby in his arms and leaves them where they are standing. Shelton follows him out first.

 

Sledge looks down at the wound on the mother's face which is already starting to rot away and be eaten by maggots. He remembers Shelton's words, coming from another time, 'What if they got it wrong, tell you to shoot people who are not Japs?' It does not feel hypothetical anymore. At this moment, he does not feel like shrugging away the issue. He knows the answer now. If they get it wrong and they tell you to kill people who are not Japs, you are made to see that some blood is harder to wash off of your hands as a child is left orphaned.

 

When he follows orders and sends explosives through the roof of a house, he gets to witness the final, excruciating seconds of life of a wounded old woman.

 

As he looks into her dark eyes, filled with tears that will not stop flowing, she drags the barrel of his gun against her forehead. He has killed a lot of people since he became a Marine, from afar and from up close. He has killed people and got a glimpse of their eyes––saw the pain, the surprise or the resolve in them.

 

He realizes he cannot take the shot.

 

There is something in him, deep and uncontrollable, which keeps him from taking the shot. As bad as he thought his true nature to be, he realizes now it had only been a partial truth. There is not in him a single truth, a single nature. The same way the needs to harm and to protect battle inside Shelton, there is not in him simply indifference and the ability to create suffering––perhaps war has a way of forcing you to see yourself in different truths.

 

She dies because of him. She dies in his arms. He will never be able to explain to anyone what happened in that house. 

 

* * *

 

 

A single bomb kills an entire city, and they get steaks and a coke and a movie to celebrate.

 

They learn later that the war is won. The whole battalion commemorates with booze that appeared out of nowhere, like it had been there all along, waiting for a reason to come out and let them have a good time. Burgie, Shelton and he decide to take their celebration to the rocks surrounding camps, making jokes and smoking cigarettes.

 

The sky is vast, full of stars, in a way that reminds him of Mobile. He knows the celestial patterns he is seeing are not the same, but it is easy to fool his brain into thinking this myriad of sparkling dots is arranged in the same order. For a second, he feels terribly _grand_ , bigger than life. There are so many stars in the sky, probably as many as the bullets that were shot in the war, and he managed to secure himself a place in-between them. So many were pierced by their unforgiving brightness, so many succumbed to the call of the unearthly––but he survived. He survived the war.

 

From the commotion a figure emerges slowly. It is their lieutenant, the one who has spent the entire war making it his business to keep them in line. He brings with him liquor and slurred words. He seems filled by all the promises of the stars.

 

" _What do we do now_ ," Shelton repeats after Mac swaggers away, obviously drunk and contemplative. "What an idiot."

 

It turns out it takes another six months before they have to figure it out. Wars are won but are never over, the destruction laid in their wakes breathing and moving like living things. Wars are won and he is still alive.

 

He is still alive.

 

He has no idea what he is supposed to do with the life that has not been his for so long. He has no idea how he is supposed to go back to the only place he can call home when everything about it is now foreign to him. He knows his point of departure, knows the route the boat will take, the train he will board, the place where he will arrive. Yet, he does not know where this is taking him. He has been a puppet, pulled by strings throughout the war, and the same strings are now bringing him back. But the world has changed. He has changed. The war has changed everything.

 

He should feel like he is coming home, back to familiar places and faces. However, there is this voice inside of him, whispering that he is actually leaving it behind.

 

* * *

 

 

Sledge wakes up to the now-familiar movement of the train that lulled him to sleep minutes (hours) earlier. He opens his mouth to ask Shelton which state they are currently travelling through and he is not there. In front of him––he is not there. Above his head––his duffel bag gone too. The dark scenery outside gives him no clue as to how far they have gotten from New Orleans.

 

He cannot help but feel shocked. Since the day he set foot on Pavuvu, not one day of his life has passed without having Shelton in it. He painfully cannot remember what his father's voice sounds like, but he can read Shelton's moods just by the rhythm of his speech. He does not recall the face of Mary Houston for whom he used to carry a torch back in Mobile, but he knows that, when it rains, Shelton feels an ache in his shoulder, a gift from that day he nearly got blown up to pieces on Peleliu. He can no longer remember how his mother takes her tea, but he knows like it is the most definitive fact in this world that Shelton now takes his coffee with a mountain of sugar because the bitter taste of black coffee awaken ghosts from the battlefield.   

 

He has never said it out loud, will probably never dare to think it again, but Shelton––Snafu was the closest thing to home he has had during the war.

 

And he left. Without a word. As if they were strangers.  

 

How quickly and easily loneliness settles in his bones. He lets his head fall on the cool window of the train. Against the dark of the night, his own reflection stares back at him. There are many things he has never said out loud, many things he will never dare to think again. But at this very moment, he allows himself to think all the thoughts he has tried so hard not to think.

 

He thinks, love is not pure, has never been. It is interested, in the way that it is not. It is a state of affection travelled by trails of reciprocity and the need for recognition. It is a mud path, a paved road, a long stretch of rails heading West. He might have needed Shelton, might have wanted him to stay until they had reached their destination. He thinks he might have loved Shelton, in a deranged, profound way he has never loved anyone else before.

 

He might have loved Shelton, and he will never see him again.

 

* * *

 

 

Back home, the war has been turned into something of a spectacle; a surface of commoditized nationalism singing the praise of freedom and the American people––the glory of dress uniforms pressed and polished, the suspense of action movies celebrating America's moral victory over Germany and Japan, the reconstructed collective memory being laid down in freshly printed history books. This surface is laid over the hidden complex of death, suffering, atrocities and ethically questionable actions that the actual war entailed. He realizes now why the experience of war had seemed so strange and foreign to men who had grown up hearing about the Great War––the act of reporting is an act of transformation, of inevitable alterations made towards specific goals.

 

Now, everywhere he walks in town, he is, in everyone's eyes, a soldier. Even with his Marines Corps uniform stored far away, never to be retrieved or looked at, he has remained a part of the war. But the war is not the same here, and so are the ones who fought in it. His multifaceted, real experience of war turns out to be interchangeable with a "reality" of battle accessed through secondary, mediated, imagined and consumable forms.

 

People tell him they saw the reels, ask him if he fought on Iwo Jima or on Okinawa as if being able to drop the names of now-well-know battles makes them experts on all things related to the war. People whine about how difficult rationing was, and some people complain that jobs are more difficult to find now that all the men are back.

 

He does not want any part in this. He stays home. He tries to put away anything that reminds him of the war––tries to put the war behind him. He still hopes that if the world manages to forget he was part of the fighting, he will manage to forget too.

 

He was convinced the war changed everything, but when he came back he realized much of what he had left behind was still the same. When he sat down on his bed, the first night he was back, he looked around and saw that not one thing had been moved in his room since he had left years ago. For a second, he thought that he only thing that was different was him. This is perhaps the hardest truth he has to live with.

 

He cannot fall into his previous life, cannot leave behind the one he got used to––every single day is lived in a state of in-between-ness. He feels like his heart is a liminal space, inhabited by passing memories and travelling people, where nothing settles. He feels like he does not know how to live, but does not know either how to die; where does this leave him? Did he survive the war only to get stuck in the limbos of his own mind?

 

Whenever someone fails to understand him, whenever his mother tries to get him to react, whenever his father tries to be understanding, something in him aches for Shelton. He realizes now how comfortable he had gotten being around someone who could understand him without trying, someone who had lived through the same scars.

 

Shelton is not there anymore, but his ability to voice his feelings and wants and needs did not come back with his leaving. Perhaps with time.

 

Some days, he wonders if he will ever be able to live through a single hour without thinking of the war. Some days, he wonders why all the other veterans he knows seem so well-adjusted to civilian life when all he does is sit under the sun and think think think think _think_.

 

At night, he finds it hard to fall asleep, his thoughts spilling too fast. But he sleeps so little that he always succumbs to the darkness around him. The nightmares never let him sleep for long, never let him forget about the war. His dreams are full of the men who died, full of the men that could have died. He dreams about Shelton dying; he dreams about Shelton putting the barrel of his riffle in his own mouth before shooting; he dreams about Shelton pulling out his teeth with his knife while he still breathes under his hands.

 

Mostly, he dreams of himself. Even after the war, he knows nothing of Japan, nothing of the men who tried to kill him. But he knows so many things about himself now––so many things he wishes he had never gotten to know. He dreams of the soldiers he has killed. He dreams of the house in Okinawa. He dreams of his mother dying in his arms instead of that old woman. He dreams of the man he is and the things he has done and he wakes up screaming.

 

When he wakes up, there is nothing. There are no faint sounds of battle. There is no one dying. There is no Shelton waking him up by telling him to shut his goddamn mouth if he does not want the Japs to get their coordinates. He is alone in his room, in Mobile, and he is safe.

 

When he wakes up, there is nothing, and perhaps nothing is the most terrifying thing of all.

 

* * *

 

 

Time now seems to pass in an odd fashion. He got used to nights without electricity burning bright with the power of ammunitions, not to lazy evenings reading in his bed. Days were added one after the other from an original genesis; counted from the beginning of an invasion––now, days are red crosses added one by one on a calendar hung in the kitchen.

 

Life as a Marine was riffled with periods of waiting, of suspense. Travelling by boat from island to island; staying at camps while higher-ups decided where they would risk their lives next; waiting for the next time the order to move out or forward came from the mouth of their lieutenant. Their idleness, their boredom was always cut short by something large and dramatic. It feels odd now that his long stretches of inactivity never culminated into anything else.

 

Rain has been falling steadily since this morning. Sledge took refuge in his room from his father's worried stares and his mother's constant attention. He sits in front of the window at his desk, leisurely reading through a book on avian biology. Sometimes he thinks he should have joined the Air Force; he thinks he would have liked to fly. Sometimes he thinks he would not have brought home as many ghosts if he had been killing people from the air.

 

There is a knock on the door of his bedroom.

 

"Gene, dear," his mother says. It is the second time she has come to disturb him in the past hour. "Your Father went out to do check-ups. Rose prepared some tea for us, why don't you join me?"

 

He knows his mother worries about him because she loves him. He knows that she is hurt, that she spent every day thinking about his brother and him while they were deployed. He knows that he did not come back whole and that he broke her heart. He loves her, more than he could ever say, but he cannot be the son she wants him to be anymore. He cannot transform into the Eugene of before the war. He cannot be his brother––cannot imagine himself married and working at a bank. He can only be himself, even if who he is makes her sad and worried.

 

"If I want to come down I will, Mother," he replies almost too curtly, keeping his eyes focused on his book. He would never tell his mother to leave him alone (would never dare, even now), but he has become good at ignoring her until she walks away in defeat. Sledge learned fighting and winning demands patience, and he has all the patience of a man who has nothing to look forward to.

 

"Well... alright, Gene. Come down whenever you feel like it." Her voice is resigned when she closes the door behind her.

 

He knows she is hurting but he has no words of reassurances in him. He has no goodness to spread to those around him. He has only nightmares and ghosts and memories. It makes it hard to care about anything. And not caring makes it hard for him to be a good man. Perhaps in time.

 

Through the window, he can see the rainfall. Rain in the Pacific was different; it was not steady and calm––it was sudden and strong and torrential. He had never entertained the thought that water could come down from the sky with such vengeance, with such power before he witnessed it for the first time. It was not surprising that greenery and living things spurted everywhere in the Pacific, growing at an almost unnatural speed––water there engulfed everything and took no prisoners.

 

There is a knock on the door again. He screws his eyes shut in annoyance and cannot hold his words from barraging out of his lips.

 

"Mother, please, can't I read in peace?" he snaps.

 

Despite his words, the door opens and his mother's face appears. "No need to be curt with me––I wasn't trying to disturb you, Gene. There's a man at the door for you. Said his name was Merriell and that you knew him."

 

Sledge cannot blame his mother for the look of surprise on her face. Since his return, she has seen him live life in a daze through which few emotions managed to shine. And yet, the simple mention of a name, of a strange man coming to their door, is enough to make him jolt up from his chair and run past her to the stairs. He might explain later, when he is not scared that Shelton might disappear. He might explain later, if he ever manages to find the words to describe what it makes him feel to know that this man, the one who spent all of the war by his side, the very one he thought he would never see again, is standing in front of the door waiting for him to come down and meet him.

 

He flies down the stairs but stops himself once he can see the door. He then walks slowly, eyes fixed on the dark silhouette he can make out through the relative darkness of the late day. Outside, rain still falls without signs of stopping.

 

Shelton is not standing by the door––in fact, the first thing he sees is his back, hunched over the cigarette he is trying to lit up. He probably took a few steps back from the door once his mother left but stayed under the porch to evade the rain. His hair is damp and his shoes full of mud. He probably refused to step inside the house in case he would not be welcomed in Sledge's home. When he turns around, his face––his face is just the same.

 

"Gene," he says.

 

He cannot handle the festering inside his chest of emotions––the ones he had killed that night on the train which have been, since then, decaying and slowly putrefying his body. He fears, if he is to let his being burst from the pressure of them, that liquid secrets and fluid shame will overflow from the holes in his skin. Sledge finds it easier to fall back on their easy, mean banter––finds it easier to act as if months had not gone by, to act as if everything was okay.

 

 "Look what the cat dragged in," he says as he crosses the threshold of the door.

 

Shelton's smirk is the same he remembers, the same he sees when he dreams. It is what he prefers to remember of him––his defiance, his foul mouth, his twisted playfulness. He sometimes sniggers at himself when he remembers he used to hate him for the exact same reasons. How things change with time.

 

"Well, ain't that something. Too far back into civilian life to remember to pay respects to your sergeant?" Shelton says, nonchalantly.

 

"Fuck you too, _Merriell_." He tries not to smile at him.

 

Before Shelton––Merriell can say or do anything else, he steps back and puts his head through the door.

 

"Mother, I'm going for a walk," he shouts to his mother, who has been listening to their conversations from the kitchen.

 

"A walk?" he hears back instantly, his mother pushing aside all pretences that she was not spying on him. Rose and she step out of the kitchen.

 

"Yes, mother. A walk."

 

"Gene, dear, it's raining. Why don't you invite your guest inside?"

 

"Don't worry, Mother, we'll be fine," he tells her as he grabs the umbrella by the door and, just before he shuts it behind him, he turns back to tell her, "We'll be back later."

 

It is a tight fit under the umbrella, but they do not mind. During war, they got used to staying close and getting rained on––in a sense, it is weirdly fitting. Even the smell of tobacco is there. It feels nice to walk side by side, to be constantly reminded of Shelton's physical presence by the brush of his shoulder against his.

 

Sledge steers them towards the wood, where the centennial trees offers them some protection from the rain and his mother's curiosity. As he walks through the same paths he has walked through all of his life, he cannot help but feel strangely glad that Shelton is walking by his side in silence. He tugs on the cigarette Shelton offered him and he almost feels at peace with the world.

 

He is not sure what to talk about––despite his calm demeanor, Snafu feels like a wild animal by his side, on his guards and easily spooked. He prefers to avoid asking him for his motivations. He cannot ask him how he has been, because he knows the answer. He settles for asking him what he has been doing since he came back.

 

"I worked in a lumberyard for a while after I came back. But I got fed up with working for a bunch of fat-heads. Couldn't believe half of the shit I was hearing."

 

"And now?"

 

He shrugs. "Ain't like I ain't got no money in my name now, thanks to the war."

 

They have a lot to thank the war for, many things they have brought with them from the war. Sometimes it is gold from the teeth of death soldiers. Sometimes it is the expression on Hamm's face as he died. Sometimes it is a mask-wearing monster of a man who left behind his hollow presence without any goodbyes.

 

"What about you?" Shelton asks him. "You said something like 'no job, no girl, no plans' on the train. That changed?"

 

Sledge laughs, a little meanly. "No. That means my mom and nearly everyone in town has been trying to set me up with a job or an eligible girl."

 

"Jesus, Gene. People here are fucking horrible, trying to throw jobs and dames at you. How you stand that shit?"

 

"Fuck off, Merriell." He knocks Shelton's shoulder with his own. Under their shared umbrella, it feels easy, simple. He had forgotten how it is like to talk with someone who is not constantly walking on eggshells around him, not constantly trying to make him into someone else (a worker, a married man, a sociable veteran).

 

Shelton half smirks, half grins at him, and they keep on walking in silence. They pass a little brook, swollen with the rain. Behind the grey clouds, the sun is slowly setting. The wood gets darker with every minute that passes. He does not feel ready to go back. Shelton does not ask to go back. They keep on walking.

 

"You're not going to ask me why I came?" Shelton asks to the silence around them.

 

They continue walking. He thinks of a million answers to that question. He thinks of a million things he had meant to say. He thinks of a million questions he has been meaning to ask. They stand as a titan-like burden on his shoulders, and he is so very tired of feeling like Atlas.

 

"Is it important that I do?" He finally replies in a sigh.

 

"Guess not."

 

Shelton says this while staring straight ahead, his tone nonchalant. Yet, Sledge can see it, the way the muscles in his jaw are pulled tight, the way his shoulders sit half-an-inch too high to be normal. He can tell this was both the right and the wrong answer to give.

 

He cannot do it anymore. He cannot endure; he does not have the strength. He stops. Shelton takes another step before he realizes Sledge stayed behind him. He turns around. For the first time since they left his home, they are facing each other. Shelton does not make a move to return under the protection of the umbrella.

 

"Why did you come?" He asks, finally. "Why did you come to see me, Snafu?"

 

Droplets fall on Shelton's head and travel down his face. Shelton's eyes are unreadable, just like they used to be. He realizes belatedly why he had always read them as such––they were not so much unreadable as guarded. Shelton had learned to trust him with his life and everything that came attached to it. Now that weeks have passed since they last saw each other (since he left without a word and Sledge was left to his thoughts, all the thoughts he had tried to never revisit again), perhaps he does not trust him with the ease he had back in the Pacific.

 

But then Shelton finally speaks through gritted teeth. "No one else gets it."

 

Just with these words, the crushing weight Eugene has been carrying is lifted from his shoulders. Eugene feels the same, has felt the same since he came back: no one else can understand who I am; no one else can understand what we went through; no one can understand what you meant to me. There is simply only one person in the world who can.

 

"There's just you." These are the only words he manages to conjure, but Merriell seems to understand what they mean––of course he would understand him. The presence of another person who saw the same things he witnessed, who feels the same way he has been feeling, reminds him that he is real and of flesh and that everything that has happened in the war is––was real.

 

"I ain't a good man, Gene," he replies after silence stretches between them leaving nothing but the sound of rain falling on the ground. His words are guarded, but his eyes no longer are.

 

Eugene scoffs, looks directly in his eyes. "You know me," he says. You know I am not a good man either, he thinks.

 

Merriell's face looks haunted, with strands of insanity around the edges. "Can't fight it on my own." Eugene understands. He knows.

 

"It's alright. 'has to be someone there to watch out for you." He takes a step towards Merriell and moves the umbrella over his head.

 

He thinks, love is not pure, will never be. It is traversed by trajectories of reciprocity and the need for recognition. He thinks he loves Merriell, in a deranged, profound way, and he does not care anymore. Of all the wrong things he has done, of all the wrong things he has felt, it is the one that feels the most _right_.

 

"I've got you," he says as damp hair falls on his neck and shoulder. He buries his nose in it, finds there the familiar smell he could not remember.

 

Night falls around them.

 

* * *

 

 

They go back to the house. On their way, they do not say much––let their shoulders brush while they stay close under the umbrella. Mother, Father and Rose are all on the first floor, gravitating close to the entrance. Dinner is ready to be served but there is no food on the table.

 

Even with the umbrella, they are drenched with water and their feet soiled with mud. He grabs Merriell's arm and steers him upstairs. "We're going to change out of these clothes," he says before anyone has the time to ask questions or start introducing themselves. "We'll come down after."

 

The visible puzzlement on his father's face is almost enough to make him trip the first step of the stairs. He suddenly realizes that giving in to the thoughts he had to leave aside meant he now had to leave them unsaid. Suddenly, he realizes that his future interactions with his parents will be parsed with constant half-truths and white lies. But Eugene learned fighting and winning demand risks and sacrifice, and he has the will of a man who has something fragile and terrifying and elating to look forward to.

 

They climb the stairs and Eugene closes the door of the bedroom behind them. Merriell, who has not said a word since they came inside, studies his room. Eugene wonders what he sees in the pale yellow walls, in the desk by the window. He wastes no time searching for a change of clothes to give to him.

 

There is a knock on the door. He opens it to find Rose, towels in her hands. She seems hesitant, thrown off by the sudden apparition of a stranger (the kind who walks under the rain without an umbrella and wears a dirty shirt to do house calls) in the house. She does not step inside the room and he does not invite her.

 

"Your mother said to bring you boys towels," she says, tone heavy with the weight of words left unsaid.

 

"Thank you, Rose." He takes the towels, gives her what he believes to be a reassuring smile and––perhaps too quickly––closes the door again.

 

Merriell looks at him. "Damn, Gene. I knew your family was loaded, but..." He cannot seem to find the words to finish his sentence.

 

"Get changed into some dry clothes," he says, holding out one of the towels.

 

Merriell takes the towel he is offering him, looks at it and then looks up with a smirk. "Your butler ain't going to come help us do that?" Eugene hands him a shirt and a pair of pants, both neatly folded, and Merriell smirks at the sight of them, the jerk.

 

"Screw you, Merriell," he says before the man can comment on them. He turns around to look for clothes for himself but cannot escape the sound of Merriell's chuckles.  

 

Merriell is still toweling his hair when he steps out of the room changed in fresh clothes to find the bathroom. He is not in the least surprised when he nearly collides with his mother on his way. Hands on her hips and pearls around her neck, she looks concerned under her anger.

 

"Young man, what is up with all this running away and around nonsense? Don't you think you could take a second to talk to us––don't you think you owe us an explanation? I know you've been wanting to be independent and you don't want us sticking our noses in your business, but this is still our home and you are still our son, Gene."

 

He tries to think of the best diplomatic answer he can give in the situation. He thinks of his attitude towards his parents since he came back. He thinks of Merriell's drawl branding him as an outsider, thinks of his dirty clothes made from cheap materials branding him as a working man––there is nothing, at first glance, that can connect the separate worlds Merriell and he live in. He has no difficulty understanding his mother's concerned anger, Rose's careful suspicion or his Father's silent puzzlement. There is only one possible explanation that makes sense.

 

"He is a man who has fought alongside me during the war, Mother." He says, both as an answer and as an explanation, and does not say anything more. He does not know where to start, but mostly, he would not know where to end.

 

She seems taken aback, surprised perhaps both by his answer and the fact he answered so directly, so quickly.  

 

"He's going to be staying here, if you and Father do not mind."

 

"Oh," she says. "Oh, of course, your friends are always welcomed here. I'll ask Rose to prepare the guest room." She pauses for a second, remembering her irritation. "Perhaps next time you can tell us in advance you are having a visitor, to let us prepare for the visit. This is all very sudden. All very sudden," she repeats, shaking her head slightly.

 

"It's alright, Mother. He doesn't need the guest room." She stops in her steps to give him a puzzled expression. He might fidget on his feet before answering. "We're used to sleeping on the floor." Again, her expression translates her lack of understanding. It is frustrating, to have to put this in words, to have his own life and needs and desires so foreign to his own parents that he needs to verbalize everything. "It's... easier to sleep if we're there to keep watch," he tries to explain.

 

She falls silent for a second. She always fall silent whenever he says anything that reminds her he was out there fighting a real war. She has never mentioned the nightmares again, since that conversation they had weeks ago that had him storming out of the house. There are so many things he feels he cannot share with his parents, and so many things he will never have the right to tell them.

 

"I will ask Rose to bring a duvet and cushions to the room then."

 

"Thank you, Mother."

 

"Well, you boys get ready for dinner and come join us downstairs. I will talk to your Father."

 

"Thank you," he says again. He means it.

 

She looks at him, shakes his head and gives him a fond smile. "And we tried so hard to you teach you and your brother some proper manners..." She does not finish her thought, but she leaves a kiss on his cheek before going downstairs.

 

When he comes back from the bathroom, Merriell is already wearing the fresh set of clothes. He is looking through his books––typical of him to forgo any pretence of privacy. Eugene steps behind him, tests the way his own shirt falls on Merriell's shoulders, a little bit too large around the waist.

 

"The bathroom is at the end of the hallway if you need to go."

 

Merriell hums in response. He turns around to face Eugene. His eyes are bruised purple by the lack of sleep and he has a day-old stubble on his chin. It is hard to look directly at him, but perhaps even harder to look away.

 

"You want to travel?" Merriell asks out of the blue. He then clarifies, "Got a map and a globe in your room."

 

"Not any more than the next person. I just like to know where things are."

 

Merriell gives him a self-depreciating grin. "Got ourselves enough travel to last us for a couple of years anyway."

 

Sledge takes a breath that feels easier. It is freeing to be around someone who can think like him, who knows what he means before he can say the words. Someone who does not need to invoke the war to talk about it. It feels simple, in the way things have not been for a long time now.

 

He takes Merriel's wrist in his hand as a form of assurance. He does not know if he does it for Merriel or for himself. "We'll go downstairs to eat with my parents." That alone is a terrifying prospect. "If you swear at any time during dinner I will dismember you."

 

"You say the sweetest things." A smirk blossoms on his lips, looking nothing like a smile––and yet the way his eyes wrinkle on the side betray him. Eugene feels scared, for a second, by the affection he feels simply at the sight of them.

 

Dinner is an awkward affair for everyone involved. Rose is thrown off by the guest who is not used to being served food. His parents cannot help but be thrown off by most of the genuine answers Merriell provides (his having no living relatives aside from his grandfather, an Indian who lives on a reserve, and his aunt who lives in New York; his not having a job or plans to pursue higher education; his being nicknamed Snafu of all things). Merriell does not swear during the meal, but he looks out of place––he was not raised to attend social dinners at doctors' houses. He was not raised to politely answer deeply private questions, much less been trained to deal with stares even more inquisitive than words spoken out. Merriell's words themselves highlight his out-of-placeness; during dinner, they seem to transform into a parody of discourse, ill-fitted on the top of his tongue. His work of preventive censure is audible and Sledge does not know if Merriell tries because of him, or if the muscles of his mouth unconsciously stretch in foreign ways whenever he is in the company of people of means. But Merriell tries, does his best, and Eugene feels like that is enough to ask out of him.

 

They circle around the subject of war, of course. His parents are waiting for Eugene and Merriell to provide stories and details the way his brother or Sid would. But they are both unwilling to discuss war, and only reply to his parents’ questions with short answers (we were in the same squad, we had each other's back, we saved each other's lives).

 

When they finally escape to his room, Merriell looks at him and says "Can't figure how you can stand to be in this place." Eugene understands. He does not think Merriell can ever fit in his childhood home, the same way he feels like he will never belong there again.  

 

Rose brings the additional duvet and some cushions. They lay them on the floor and they both settle for the night in Eugene's small bed.

 

Outside, it has stopped raining. The wind coming from the open window is fresh and humid. They leave the bedside lamp on and talk for a while. Merriell talks a little bit of how he came to Mobile, how he found out how to find him. They talk a little about the string of weeks they have spent apart. They leave more unsaid than they actually say, but it is fine. There is, after all, this tentative hope making them feel like they have all the time in the world to say them in the future.

 

War has changed everything, but a lot has changed since the war. They are not the same people they were when they left for training camp, but they are also not the same men who came back from the Pacific. When they lay next to each other, it is easy because of the way the war was, because of how the war made them, but it is not like it was during the war. There has never been time for peace, no time for gentleness during the war. This is different.

 

That night, he has nightmares like any other nights. When he wakes up, there are no faint sounds of battle. There is no one dying. But there is Merriell, who woke him the way he used to when it was his turn to keep watch. There is Merriell's hand, which finds his stomach, rising and falling with the rhythm of his laboured breaths. He wakes and he is not alone with the ghosts and the memories.

 

Later that night, after Merriell is woken up by his own nightmares, they lay facing each other in the dark. Merriell's fingertips trail down his arm. His presence feels almost too overwhelming––as if too many things were trying to fit inside his ribcage all at once. It is almost unbearable, the warmth he feels.

 

Merriell's head falls into the crook of his neck and he murmurs words in the secret of his skin. "It's alright if we didn't die out there, Gene." The night is silent after robbing Eugene from his breath. "It's alright if we ain't dead." He squeezes his eyes and his mouth shut, afraid of what might come out of them in the dark of the room.

 

He will never know why he survived the war, only that the relief he felt at first gave way to guilt. Now, he feels almost sure that the guilt will one day grow into acceptance.

 

When he wakes up that morning, the sun is shining gently through the light blue of the curtains. It casts a soft, tinted light across the yellow of the walls. Outside, birds are chirping away against the sound of rustling leaves. Merriell is snoring against his arm. It feels easy. It feels like home. It feels like life can actually move on.

 

When he wakes up that morning, Eugene's mind is made about going to college. 

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you made it through all the metaphors and enjoyed the fic. 
> 
> Please come and say hi: [tumblr](http://intertextualgaps.tumblr.com/).


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